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In the Telling
In the Telling
Make 'em Laugh
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You can be the funniest person in the world, but if you don't have a work ethic, you're not going to get anywhere. Nobody's going to notice you. Same with music. You can be the best guitar player in the world, but if you don't grind and write and make yourself better or different than everybody else, I'm not gonna go anywhere with it.
Speaker 2The voice you just heard belongs to comedian and musician. Guy side L .
Speaker 1I am guy site L . I'm a local, a comedian. Slash. Musician. Slash. Entrepreneur. Uh, I've lived in salt Lake since 2007
Speaker 2who joined me to talk about political correctness in comedy, the art of making people laugh and the craft behind his financially and comedically successful musical performances of the Marcus and guy show a guy with an impressive work ethic himself. He became so successful as a comedian and a musician that he was paying the bills working only three or four days a month, not wanting to sit idle. He used the financial success of his career as an entertainer to open a more traditional business. His art funded his day job. I'm your host Liz Christiansen , and it's all in the telling.
Speaker 3Welcome to episode 14 make them laugh with guest comedian and musician guy Sydell . Where are you from? Guy helper, Utah. Tiny little town
Speaker 1Southeast about two hours South of salt Lake.
Speaker 3Guy is a real entertainer. He's a musician and a comedian. He's done both separately for many years, but lately in the very successful, the Marcus and guy show, he's been blending both a little more seamlessly. What is the Marcus and guy show? Me and
Speaker 1comedian friend of mine, Marcus, who was the runner up on last comic standing season six I believe. He's an impressionist and before he was an impressionist, he was a singer in a band, so we did comedy together for years. We were just buddies. We started doing the show where I play guitar and then he does these singing impressions. It started off as just kind of something to do and we do stand up for 10 minutes at the show. It is, we can do it squeaky clean. So we moved into the corporate world with that. So we do mostly corporate events. We'll do wiseguys four or five times a year, but mostly corporate events because we can do that clean . So we still do stand up when we do wiseguys and then we'll do music and I still also host shows at wise guys here and there. Do a set here and there. But as far as pursuing the standup dream, not anymore because the music show that Marx and I do has gotten so much more momentum and so much more heat. We're actually filming a special in a theater in two weeks. So yeah, co music led a comedy comedy led back to music, like integrating the two together. It's, yeah, it's a comedy musical comedy show to say it's not hokey. That's debatable, but we're definitely not up there singing cheesy songs. We're kind of doing impressions of singers showing how people, how certain songs sound the same. Certain styles of music sound the same all while making it funny and , and I'm not being
Speaker 4biased. The reaction we get from the crowds in the corporate events, which are hard to do because people aren't there for comedy. Right? It's better than any standup I've ever been in any, any in involved in any kind of standup. The reactions is just such a unique and fun show to do that it's , it's totally different. And like I said, we can do it. Family friendly at guys . We don't, we did a bunch of cruises last year but wanting to do corporate events and stuff like that. Squeaky clean, however clean they want us to be. You know, Disney clean or do you want a PG 13, whatever. We can make it work.
Speaker 2I would imagine that your show retain some of what I get from standup comedy, which is that it is a finely honed routine. Like they're not just up there off the cuff winging it. The ones that are good in it
Speaker 4and it looks like it is, I mean some comics do some comics, Jimmy Pardo , um , there's a few guys out there, trod work guys who just get up and what's your name? Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom and just keep going. But yeah, it's, it's a very, and we have bits that are meant to look spontaneous but they're not. But also things happen spontaneously and we're like, that was awesome. Let's do that again. A little bit of both. But yeah, comedy, it's, it's mostly canned but it's, but a good comic will make it look like they're just up there ripping .
Speaker 2What does that collaboration between you and Marcus like in creating and performing the show?
Speaker 4What we'll do is we'll sit down and I'm like, Hey, I learned this song I heard the other day on the radio. It sounds like take for instance, semi charmed life by three third eye blind. However we have a bit that involves that. And we heard that and we're like, that's also if you sing ACE of base, the sign over the top of that, it works the same chord structure and progression pretty much. And then also if you put , uh, this song on top of this is , so we have these, we have certain medleys that are six minutes long, the same chord structure, all these different songs, but also that we'll have some like, okay, now watch this, we'll change this thing slightly. And it turns into this and it's kind of what we point out, our special that we're filming on the 23rd of August is called, it's all the same. And that's why even some of the voices that Marcus does, Adam Sandler sounds like Dave Matthews and he, he'll point out how and how, why , no , I'll do backup singers and we kind of go back and forth bouncing each other ideas and rifts on stage and setting each other up. But that's kinda how we do it. We're like, okay, well we have an eighties bit, we have a nineties bit, this bit fits into there. So that's how we do that with, with the music, with stand up . I used to write on stage, I'd have a five minute bit and I'm like, okay, I have something to add to that and then okay I added that I could take this out. So it's kind of like that's every comic writes differently, but that's kinda how I did it. I would write on stage, get ideas. I'm not the kind of sit down with a pen and paper and just write out a bit. Did that when I first started. It's just exhausting. And you get writer's block like crazy if you're just staring at a blank piece of paper, you know, nothing, nothing happens for me anyway. Um , some comics can do that. It sounds like you're offering a unique product and very of entertainment. Very especially so in a corporate culture, if I think about like what they're probably doing for entertainment, when you're doing corporate events, you're bringing comedy or you're bringing entertainment to people. If you're at a comedy club, they're coming there for you. They're coming there to laugh, they're coming there to be entertained. If you go to a corporate event, they're eating dinner and they're like, what? And now somebody on stage, so your extra, you gotta work extra hard because a lot of those people aren't there for that. They want to eat and they want to talk to each other. Right. And we've learned how to time that. Cause one time we, when we were first started doing corporate events, we were like, okay, you ready? They were like, you ready to go on? Yup. Hey everybody, dinner's ready. Here's Marcus and guy. So everybody was eating while we, while we started and it just did not go well. So now we tell people like, let me , then we go on to win over a crowd that's not there for you is it is a bit of an extra challenge. We deliver. We've only had a couple times in the past five years that didn't really work out. And when it did and when that did happen, it was more of a logistic things. The room was too big for the PA and they couldn't hear us or you know, they serve dinner while we were like that. But other than that we, we always do well and it's kinda, we kinda pride ourselves on being able to entertain a crowd that's not there for us. That sounds really tricky that your venue is going to be really inconsistent and all your logistical things are going to be in confectionary . And it's, it's bit us in the behind more than once, you know. So now we have writers because when we first started this and we were new to doing Covance , that'd be like we have, we don't worry. We have our sound system and you show up and it's the overhead speakers in a, in a conference room and there's the mic plug into the wall. And it sounds like, it sounds like a McDonald's drive through speaker. So we've learned, okay, we need this, this, this for PA this for microphones. You know, I'll show up on my guitar and we'll be ready to go. So, yeah, for this show, I mean, I , I have been playing for so long that, and I have one of everything but the music the first time it was a rock band. Yeah, yeah. I was gonna I was going to heavy metal band from the time I was 15. Oh, that's, yeah . So me and my buddies started a band when we were 15 years old. Well, they were 15. I was 16. Uh, I was a year older than either two buddies. We've played as recently as a year ago in the past 12 years since I left home. It's once every five years. Hey, are you free this weekend? There's a class reunion or a whatever. And I'm like, yeah, I'm free. I'm free. Let's make it, let's do it. Let's make it work. From 1995 until 2007 we were pretty much every weekend somewhere. Same, same four or five guys. That's pretty awesome. Yeah , that was blast . Yeah. And we were all friends. We learned how to play together. It wasn't like a bunch of establishing musicians formed a band. We I knew a little bit on guitar and we needed a bass player. So I told my buddy, Hey, you're a bass player here. I'll show you. I'll show you how to play these notes. And then he developed, it , became a great bass player. My drummer had already been planned and but he was young, so he developed that in the band and we found a singer in our high school and we were all just friends. So even when we weren't playing music, we were still just hanging out. So it was, it was great. I wouldn't start a band now Y time for one. But I think also as an adult, everybody's got everybody set in their ways. Everybody's got so many more priorities for the special that Marcus and I are filming on the 23rd we put together a band for about half of the bits and it's been going great. But same problems you have with when everybody has jobs and homes and kids and wives. It's, I could practice Thursday, can you know, Friday by Friday I can , Nope, can, you know, I can't, blah, blah blah. And then nothing happens. Um , I don't know how adult bands make it work. There's a lot of 'em out there of , you know, grown men playing on the weekends. I don't , I don't know how they do it because when you got five different lives to to commit to something that's not really, there's not a lot of money in , in music unless, you know, Mark's , and I've lucked out. We found a niche, but the guys you see playing in the bars, they're not making a ton of money. So it's hard to commit to that. You have to really, really love it and find five, four or five guys, whoever, women, whatever that can and want to commit to that. So I wouldn't want to do it right now and it'd be just too much work for too little payoff . Maybe when I have this vision of like when I'm 60 and everything's done and I'm just kinda chilling, then I can like get some buddies together and you know, go play the local whatever bar just for fun. I used to laugh at those guys when I was young and in a band I would go over those old guys in a cover band. That's pathetic. And now I'm like no, just for fun. That's, that's what's all about. What would your cover band be? I dunno. I'd have to be goofy cause I cause a lot of the bands when you see, I think it's corny when you like see dudes my age and older, like taking it seriously rocking out and then that's fun. I get it. But like I would want to be the goofy kind of, you see these bands with like wigs and kind of making fun of yourselves a little bit. That's where I would go if I were to start a cover band and be a little like little corny little like cheesy, but knowing it a little self-aware . He is very self aware. I couldn't, I couldn't see myself getting on stage and playing, you know, play that old time. Rock and roll and meaning it , it, it, it'd have to be like, look, we know this is kind of corny, old timer music, but we're having fun.
Speaker 5I get the sense and I'm neither a musician I would say, or a comedian. Although I do entertainment and performing, so I like it involves some incestuous. Yeah. It seems to me that music is a bit more flexible and con comedy in terms of stand up .
Speaker 4Absolutely . Absolutely . Is way more stringent. Yeah. When you're , if you're, when you're a comic, you're naked, you're up there and it's only you. If you bomb, you can't blame anyone. You can't look over at the guitar playing rock . What are you doing? The bass player, the drummer, you're up there and if it's not working, it's, it's on you. You can't, you can't blame it on anyone else. In rare instances, you know, maybe there's a disruptive audience member or something, but if the show is going bad, you're, you're on your own and it's kind of hard to dig your way out of that. But you have a this tight collaborator that it's mostly just the two of you right now and what you're doing aside from the special that we're filming yet, it's just both of us. How does that work really well? Marcus is as pro as they [inaudible] .
Speaker 1Yeah , he's been doing it forever. He's probably the most talented guy I've ever met. He's just that package, that guy and the dynamic between the two of us or works really well because he, he's very extra. He's up and loud and in your face and just an entertainer as to where even when as a standup , I'm kind of more of a laid back, you know, raised eyebrow type of guy and that's the dynamic between us is he's up front singing. We were usually on stools next to each other, but he gets up and he's in in the somebody in the front row and they're facing, and to him as the , where I'm kinda in the back rolling my eyes a little bit,
Speaker 4you know, or a straight man. He's , he's kind of up there and being crazy and like the dynamic between us. Even if you look at our promo shots, it's kind of like me being like, Ugh, this guy, even though that's not really what our relationship is, but it's more of like I'm the laid back mellow. I set him up, he knocks it down. I have my moments in the show, but I'm kind of, I'm the musical director. I'm like, this will work because of this reason. This won't, this does here, this doesn't, it works really well because if we were both him, it wouldn't work. We were both just up and out and crazy. It's redundant. Yeah, we don't need that. And then, and then he's the singer and the impressionist. I understand the focus. That's where the focus goes. I'm setting him up. My, my place in the show is just as important, but I understand that 90% of the time the eyes are on him, which is fine with me. Yeah, it's a blast.
Speaker 5I want to follow that thread a little bit about , um, just sort of in terms of the topics that , uh, music versus comedy can broach and how they do that differently. It seems like, like comedy every once in a while bubbles up as a controversy of like how politically correct as comedy have to be. And I don't really see people getting all up in music's business. Like, that's enough .
Speaker 4Great what you're doing. Right. And if you look at the history of some music, if there was, there were songs that came out 2030, 40, 50 years ago that couldn't come out today. You know, look at the Beatles . She was just 17 winger. The eighties had a song called, she's only 17 daddy says she's too young, but she's old enough for me. If you try that today, you would be hung from the rafters. But yeah, music really doesn't catch that music now. It's a lot more, I don't want to sound like an old guy, but if you'll listen to like Nicki Minaj and that kind of stuff, you're like, man, this would have been underground when I was growing up. I mean that kind of stuff existed to life crew. But these songs are mainstream radio hits and they're talking about some subjects you're like, Whoa, that's intense. But music, yeah, music doesn't really, you can be a musician and sing about the craziest stuff in the world, but if you do something outside of music, you know, if you some something scandalous, a photographer catches, you'll get it even though you're singing about, so the art kind of masks a lot of the subject, I guess. Does comedy get a pass sometimes for being able to talk about things? It used to, a lot of comics would disagree with me on this, but I, I'm from the mentality that comedy should be the safe zone. You can talk about anything in my mind, everything, if it's done right, should be able to be joked about. A lot of people say, no, you can't make this subject funny or you can't make that subject funny. Most people can't make those things funny. But a really good comedian can. Tracy Morgan got in some trouble a while back because he made a joke about if his son was gay. There's been a few comedians out there who have made some jokes and it's, everybody's got, everyone's got a camera in their pocket now. So you can't even say things in a comedy club without it getting out to the world. Um , there's a lot of comics, Dave Chappelle, no phones allowed them. They put them in a locked pouch. So I used it . The , I used to think comedy was the safe zone, but it's kind of getting to be a little bit blurred. That's unfortunate. I predate the internet. I'm 41. Uh , so I'm fully immersed in the internet, but I remember life before when you could make jokes about things and that's what they were. They were jokes they didn't have to get blown up into a big deal. You know. Now if you make a joke about this ethnicity drive slow in the fast lane, you're lumped into the same categories that people who think slavery should be brought back. You just labeled a racist. There's different scenes of racial humor and racist humor. A lot of people won't go there. I am a little bit of every race, so I kind of make fun of myself. And you have to, you have to understand what's, what's offensive and what's funny because when you're talking race, very blurred lines there of what's racial and what's racist. A lot of people say, don't even make racial jokes. And I, I'm not of that mentality. As long as it's harmless and funny. What kind of advice are you going to give to a younger comic who's
Speaker 5saying, I want to test those things out. I want to get good enough to be able to make jokes that if they fail, they're gonna fail. Huge. But I gotta there's gotta be a safe space to practice that, right?
Speaker 1Yeah. Uh , yeah . It's such a, and it also depends on who you are too. If you're a straight white male, no . Yeah . You gotta watch yourself because you don't have a lot of room making those kinds of jokes because you are the, the the poster child of privilege. Exactly. There you go. You're the privileged one. A lot of people disagree with that, but if you're a straight white male, you're not gonna, you're not gonna relate to many oppressed people. So you kinda, you gotta kind of tread lightly and work your way up to making those kinds of jokes, the context of them , how they're , how you approach the joke. Again, bill Burr, he's my, he's my favorite guy. Jim Jefferies , George Carlin. They are straight white males, but they approach these subjects so good and so smart. That's the thing. You gotta be smart to be a good comedian. You gotta be smart. Go to open mic on Wednesday. You're gonna see a lot of idiots up there just saying bad stuff just to say it. So if you're a new comedian wanting to do kind of edge your comedy, you gotta ask yourself, am I intelligent enough to pull this off eloquently? Because if not, you're just going to look like a jerk saying some insensitive stuff.
Speaker 5It's both. Um , well maybe more than both. It's your, it's your demographic. It's your delivery and it's your actual articulation, right ?
Speaker 1Yeah. Demographic and deliveries . Huge. Marcus and I were on a cruise ship, but a year and a half ago, maybe a year ago. Anyway, the cruise ship left from South Carolina and we met the boat in Costa Rica and then it was going back to South Carolina. Well, we didn't even really make a joke, but somebody, we were doing impressions and somebody yells out, do Trump. So Mark has just made a jab at Trump. It was a two second job and it wasn't even like mean there was it swear words. Just a , just a quick [inaudible] . Literally half the rooms stood up, walked out, and then we were on the boat for two more days because it was going straight from Sam lawn back to South Carolina or wherever we, I got stopped in the elevator by a group of older people telling me to , if I don't like it, leave our Facebook page, had hate mail, all kinds of stuff. Uh , we're both a little ethnically ambiguous, so there were get out, there's a lot of assumptions about, yeah, and we just, so we should have known our demographic , uh , a boat full of all their white people from South Carolina. We probably shouldn't have made a Trump joke. Right then. What would you say to the guy that , are you just like, pretend you don't hear it or, yeah, the guy who yelled Trump, what we should have done was just ignored it. And what, what Marcus said was just so innocent. And I can't remember the exact comment, but it was just so quick and innocent. But those people who support him, Pete , his, his followers are so hardcore that you can't even make a slight jab at him. We did and we heard about it. My only, my only regret is that we didn't know our demographic wasn't making the joke. It was just like, yeah, that was probably the wrong cow to make that joke for.
Speaker 5Do you , um, do you feel like there's some commonalities with the Utah corporate demographic that you can paint with some brush strokes and say we just sort of always expect
Speaker 1this, this and this. Assume everybody is Karen in HR, innocent, straight and narrow play to that demographic. We can't, you know, we can see one guy who has tattoos. We don't want to play to him. I've heard corporations that hire us tell us we won't even hire a clean comedian because even a clean comedian can say it , have a subject that would offend somebody and delivery isn't going to use those words. But there's subject matters, right? So we , with music you, you, it's kinda hard to cross those lines. We're singing songs and we do have jokes in between this and that, but we know which ones we can't do and which ones we shouldn't do and how to word them. Cause even music has, we have this medley that we usually end with. It's like probably 40 rap verses of classic hip hop songs that we do and we've been doing it wiseguys when we do, it's probably 12 minutes long and it's , and it's of classic hip hop so you can understand the language that's in there when we're doing it at wise guys it works because we do it true to the actual songs. When we do that in the corporate events, it's actually funnier because of how much we have to edit ourselves. We do a bit , uh, get low by little John, it goes [inaudible] we say, ah, ski skating , mother, father. And it's, and it's actually funnier because it's like now it's goofy, but there's some songs, Marcus does an M and M song while I'm playing guitar. And it's kind of funny because we play it off as, Oh what are you doing? You're doing this on. Yeah. And then we kind of both look confused when he starts getting to the perks. There's this 15 swear words in a single verse and he , he goes ripped it up. And it sounds like a broken McDonald's speaker. And it's funny because he self editing himself on stage and it's actually funnier because we're both kinda like, Whoa. Yeah . So sometimes when you take that out and acknowledge that you're altering it, it makes it more funny.
Speaker 5Oh, that's kind of a staple of comedy anyway, right? Like pointing at something that everybody sees all the time, but they don't truly see true comedy.
Speaker 1That is true comedy and a lot of people don't see that. They'll think they'll take offense to it. I made a comment the other day, here's a local thing. I just, I post most of my, the content I think of now goes on Facebook. I'll think of something funny, put it on Facebook. I made a comment the other day, I said, do you even live in West Jordan if you don't have a giant fifth wheel trailer sitting next to your house? And that's just an observation of mine. Everybody in West Jordan seems to have a , seems to have a big old fifth wheel trailer in their house. Not a, not a negative or a positive, but it's just an observation where people are like, what's wrong with that? Nothing. Nothing's wrong with that . I was just pointing out that it's funny that that area of town is where all the people who have fifth wheels go cause there's probably the room for them or whatever. It's just, it was just an observation. What's wrong with that? Nothing come down. You know , you don't have to look for things to be offended about kinda . That's kinda the way I see that. That's a good comment can make it like, Oh yeah, that is how that is. It's hard to do. There's a great comic con in New York. He's an old pro and I've worked in a few times named rich rich Vos and he said, I'll never understand why people get offended at comedy shows in the age of the internet. You can, you can do your research. I would never go to a jam . I would never go to a concert, sit in the front row and say, I hope it's jazz. Wiseguys is the big comedy club chain in Utah. There are bar shows outside of that. Once in a while you'll get a big act at a theater or a, you know, Jerry Seinfeld at this or Brian Regan at this. But if you want to go watch a family friendly comedy show, do your research, you're going to want to either go to, well, the two wiseguys clubs and salt Lake and West Jordan are 21 and over, so it can't bring the kids to that one. But the Ogden one's all ages. If you wanna bring your 15 year old, get on the website. Who's going to be there this weekend? This guy, let's look him up on YouTube. Eh , he's a little too little, too dirty, little too edgy, little too blue, whatever. Probably not wanting to go see him. Oh, Brian Regan's coming. We can take the whole family and he is coming. Guaranteed. Not going to offend anybody. Guaranteed going to be hilarious. We got the big guys coming all the time. Brian Regan, Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Gaffigan, Gabriel Yglesias , they're all clean comics who kill. I went and saw Brian Regan about three years ago. I laughed the whole time. Squeaky clean. I think if you can be funny and clean, you're printing money. It's, that's the way to go. Cause you can get into the corporate world, private events and corporate, that's where the money's at. You don't have to sell tickets, you don't have to promote. It's the best. I can't imagine going back to doing road comedy in bars and Montana again, no hustle. The hustle, it's a nightmare. But there's local comics who are squeaky clean theirs out of the Ludo, Jordan, Macon , Steve sober, Josh phone and philosophy . They're clean and they're funny. All of them. But I couldn't do an hour of clean standup if I had to. That's just not my brain. My brain goes a little more cynical and more dark, more not aggressive, abrasive maybe. Okay, so,
Speaker 4so the music show kinda counters that you called yourself, the optimistic cynic . So where's the optimistic part come in ? I've always kinda thought this about myself even before I did comedy. I know the beauty and things. I can see the beauty and things. I know that every person on this planet there , whether it be their, their religion, their political stance, everybody has their place. Even if I don't agree with it or if I don't participate in that, everybody has their place. Where's the funny in that though? The funny is in pointing out the differences, look at this, look at that guy. What he does. Oh that's crazy. You know, pointing out the, I want , I don't wanna say negatives, but [inaudible] and believe this if you need to, but more of taking the piss out of things. Just making fun of stuff. Me and my friends, when we get together, a lot of people say, Oh, how are you doing? This is in me and my buddies, we get together and we just hammer each other. We just beat each other up. Just nice shirts. Stupid, where'd you get it? You blah blah blah, blah blah. That's how my brains always been. The funny is in the making fun of it and there's , there's obviously boarders , you know, you don't want to cross, ah , your wife just died, idiot. You know, you don't wanna do anything like that. There are guys out there who can, who can do the opposite. You can, but I'm not that guy. I can't be, ah , strawberries are delicious. That's just not how my brain works. A good example of that would be the macho, gung-ho , kind of annoying big truck in your face. Aggro guy. He , he's annoying. He's, he's the worst. Right? But that's the guy who signing up for the Marines. We need him. But there's also the , the a hundred pound barista who has never fired a gun or been in a fight or had anything somewhat , uh , aggressive in his life. We need him to , he needs, he's the art guy or he's the, he's going to be the accountant or the, whoever. Everybody has their place that there's also a line when I'm on Facebook and somebody I don't know, just starts hammering me for something. I'm like, wait a minute. You're not in the club. You have to earn this. Earn this yet. Yeah. So it's gotta be again, it's gotta be funny if a stranger comes at me with something hilarious. Good job. That was a good one. Thank you. But if you're just being rude to be rude, I have to sit back and like, okay, what's this person's intent? Are they trying to, are they trying to be a jerk or are they just trying to participate in my brand of humor? Text does not relay tone and that's, I think that's a big problem in our world and I see it upon a bunch so and so said this by blah, blah, blah, and they send me a screenshot and I'm like, yeah, you can't hear their tone. You don't know if they're being sarcastic or funny or sad or whatever. I think that happens a lot. Same thing, internet fights. I stopped doing anything political
Speaker 1on the internet because you can't have a civil conversation. Everybody takes everything is you're yelling at me, maybe you're not. I don't use my caps . Locks , man . Yeah, exactly. It's easier and harder for both because anybody can be a comedian, anybody can be a musician. However, 20 years ago to get any attention, you had to be good. That's not to say that comedians and museums aren't good anymore, but anybody can do an open mic, and I did this myself when I first started. I can do an open mic. Let's get the picture on the stage, holding the mic in front of the brick wall. Start a podcast or a fan page. Start a YouTube channel. Start selling your tee shirts. I'm a comedian. Your friends and family, Oh, you're a comedian. Are you though? You have five minutes of material. You've never gotten past open, Mike . It's changed in that anybody can do it, but it's harder to break out now because of the internet. Everybody's a comedian. There's 10,000 comedians and every state to to rise above and get past all that is harder now. Back in the 80s if you did Johnny Carson, your career was set for at least two years. Yeah , you could work off that. Oh, that guy's been on Carson. Let's go see him. Now, if I were to walk into a comedy club like, Hey, I want to get on stage, which this isn't how it works, but what you been on, Oh , I've been on Conan and comedy central and you almost have to be a movie star to get any traction. There are some comics out there who are doing it, who don't have a podcast, who don't have a sit-com who don't have it , and they're doing really well. But very few successful comics are just doing comedy. I've got a buddy who does, he's a, he's a recovering heroin addict. He's been clean for 10 years. He does recovery gigs. He'll, he'll book a, a show in the city, notify all the AA centers, notify the local Facebook page for recovery. It's a niche he found. He found a way to get a certain demographic and make those people come to him. How many comics are out there? Just being, I'm only a comic. I'm a straightforward comic. They gotta work extra hard.
Speaker 2How does someone with guy's brand of comedy handle making jokes that are probably going to offend someone? What kind of jokes do you tell and which ones do you stay away from?
Speaker 1I was scrolling through Instagram the other day and I saw an inspirational post that said, you're not fat. You have fat, you also have fingernails, but that doesn't make you fingernails. Okay, that's fair enough. But if you have a hundred extra pounds of fingernails, your fingernails, so yeah, a little, little lines like that. It's just kind of , you know, if you lived in it , if you lived in a very predominantly whatever Catholic you're going to have . Yeah. You're going to have Catholic jokes if you live , you know, if you live amongst a Asian community, you're going to have Asian jokes. It's just how it is. But it's, again, it goes back to is it mean, and that's up to the person to decide if it's mean I avoid comments , sections. I mean, I have videos on YouTube. I've never once looked at him , so who knows? There might be some gold on there saying, but I learned a long time ago, if there's something public, don't read the comments because of they never ends. Well, it was a show I was on, I wasn't headlining. And this goes to show the, the how, the, how the world reacts to things, how society reacts to certain things, but not other things. I'd go up and I'm making jokes about Mexicans cause I'm part Mexicans. I'm making joke about natives cause I'm part native. I'm making jokes about Mormons. Everything. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Um , my buddy goes up and he made an epileptic joke. Guy stands up, more sisters and epileptic rabbi, rabbi brah in charge of the stage, like the guy had to be tackled. So that shows that that guy laughed at the Mexican joke . I got laughed at the Indian joke. N***a laughed at the Mormon joke, but we made a joke that hit close to home for him. So now we're the bad guys. Only if it's personal as only if it's personal. So if you're, if you're gonna laugh at cancer joke, which you know there's nothing funny about cancer, but if somebody made a joke about it and it was funny and you laughed and then they make a epilepsy joke or whatever and you get offended that you're wrong, you don't have to laugh at it. You don't have to think it's funny but you can't get mad at that when you laughed at 10 other things cause anything you just laughed out . It was probably somebody else's experience.
Speaker 2I realized talking with guy that a comic could tie themselves up in knots trying not to offend anyone. I guess you either make the jokes you want to make or hope that people don't get angry that they've done their research and know what your brand of comedy is or you just don't make the jokes that are likely to offend you as the performer are doing the research. No , your demographic guy calibrates his performances, his stand up comedy is one end of the content spectrum language and content abound. His corporate performances of the Marcus and guy show are the other end all things squeaky clean. For Karen in HR. Final tip for performer guy on this comedic dexterity,
Speaker 1it's easy to dirty up a clean joke. It's really hard to clean up a dirty joke.
Speaker 2There are a lot of different definitions for comedy, but the commonality or the most basic definition usually includes something to the effect of with the intent to make someone laugh, whether the comedy is political, religious, cultural, personal, racial, offensive, family friendly or not. The point is to get you to laugh and the comic is being extremely meticulous and honing that joke and their craft and considering the emotional temperature of the room. That's a lot of effort to elicit a spontaneous sound of amusement. Charlie Chaplin said, quote, life is a tragedy when seen in close up , but a comedy in long shot and cooked, so maybe put a little research into your entertainment choices and you can avoid what you don't want to laugh at and find what you do want to laugh at. Or maybe it would be a good idea to take a step back and laugh a little more at the things we might find tragic in our lives after all. It's the same life whether we spend it laughing or crying and crying. Just gives me a headache.
Speaker 1Marcus and the guy show Markson guy.com follow us. Follow me guy . Sydell Seid eel on Facebook. If you're not, if seeing the F word in text doesn't offend you, I don't go out of my way to do it, but it happens on Instagram too . Instagram guy Sydell yeah, pictures of me . If you want to see pictures of my dogs, Instagram has most of what it is. My dogs and my cat. Mark's got ACOM or Marcus Hardy on Facebook. Mark's and guy on Facebook and we're, we're always somewhere so you can find this guy. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3Talking with today . Thank you for listening to this in the telling interview with guy side Al of the Marcus and guy show. You can find more information about in the telling at Lizzie, Lizzie, liz.com
Speaker 6[inaudible] .